THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 21, 1995 TAG: 9504210535
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 68 lines
Waterman Steamship Lines, which brings a lot of the rubber imported through the port of Hampton Roads, may have decided to stop calling in Norfolk and move to Morehead City, N.C, one port official said.
It would be the first time in years that a major line serving the port has left Hampton Roads for a competing port.
``It's a done deal,'' said H.R. ``Bob'' Jones, president of Lambert's Point Docks Inc., the Norfolk docks where Waterman unloaded its rubber.
But an official at Waterman could not confirm the move. ``Basically, we have made no announcement about any changes,'' said Ron Rose, Waterman's senior vice president of operations.
Rose wouldn't elaborate.
Hampton Roads port officials are not ready to accede to Waterman's move. John Johnson, chief negotiator with ILA for the Hampton Roads Shipping Association, which represents port management, said he'd heard that Waterman might be moving, but that he hadn't received any official notice.
``I just don't recall any instance where somebody has left us because some other port can do something better than we can,'' Johnson said.
The likely move was prompted by lower wages rates being offered by dock workers at Morehead City, Jones said. It would mean lost revenues for Lambert's Point and lost work for dock workers in Hampton Roads.
Waterman's rubber accounted for about 25 percent of the 448,843 tons of cargo shipped through Lambert's Point Docks last year. It delivered 111,000 tons of the 267,496 tons of Indonesian rubber landed at Lambert's Point last year, generating about 22,000 hours of work unloading the ships and 15,000 hours of work handling the rubber on the docks.
Waterman is the principal carrier of rubber for Goodyear Tire plants in Danville and Fayetteville, N.C. It operates four vessels in the trade, calling in Norfolk for two or three days about once a month.
``Loss of man-hours, loss of work hurts everybody,'' said Edward L. Brown Jr., vice president of the International Longshoreman's Association Hampton Roads district.
The ILA had reached an agreement with port management in late March to establish an apprenticeship program to make the port more competitive for cargos like rubber. Under the program, apprentices would earn wages and benefits worth about $24 an hour handling rubber and other break-bulk cargo.
The agreement was the result of year-old talks to do something to make dock labor in Hampton Roads more competitive with labor in other East Coast ports. Cheaper labor elsewhere had sapped Hampton Roads' share of such noncontainerized, or break-bulk, cargo in the past two years.
Early last year, Waterman and Hoegh Lines asked the Hampton Roads Shipping Association, which represents port management in labor issues, to try to do something to reduce wages.
ILA members rejected a package of wage concessions in August. That package provided wages and benefits of about $26 an hour.
``We have made Hampton Roads competitive, more so than it has been in recent years,'' Brown said of the program.
ILA labor in Morehead City may have undercut the ILA in Hampton Roads.
Union dock workers in the small port, about 150 miles south of Norfolk, last week approved a package of wages and benefits worth about $21 an hour to help Morehead City attract Waterman, Jones said.
``They don't have a lot of work down there, so maybe that's why they did whatever they did,'' Brown said of Morehead City's ILA. by CNB